With the Time Tracking app, you can monitor how much time agents spend on tickets. For instructions on using Time Tracking, see Using the Time Tracking app.

The Time Tracking app is available on Professional and Enterprise.

Note: If you originally installed the private Time Tracking app from Zendesk Labs, installing the public version of the app from the Marketplace will reset your time tracking data, and you'll lose any data previously collected.

Installing Time Tracking

You can download and install the Time Tracking app from the Marketplace.

To install the Time Tracking app

Click the Admin () icon in the sidebar, then select Apps > Marketplace.

Find the Time Tracking app, then click the title.

On the app details page, click the Install App button on the upper-right side of the page.

(ProfessionalAdd-on and Enterprise) If you're using ticket forms, you'll need to update all of your forms to include to include two new custom ticket fields created by Time Tracking. For details, see the section below.

Configuring Time Tracking settings

You can edit Time Tracking settings when initially installing the app or by accessing the settings anytime.

To edit the Time Tracking settings

Click the Admin () icon in the sidebar, then select Apps > Manage.

Click the drop-down menu beside the name of the app, then select Change settings.

Display timer controls

This setting determines whether agents see the play and pause buttons next to the timer, allowing them to manually control when the timer starts and stops.

This setting applies only if you've enabled the Display timer to agents setting.

Reset current time

This setting determines whether agents can see the refresh button next to the timer, allowing them to start the timer over. Agent can reset his current time spent on a ticket.

This setting applies only if you've enabled the Display timer to agents setting.

Display timelogs to agents

This setting determines if agents can see a log of time spent on that ticket so far, including the agent and status for each time interval.

Auto pause

With this setting enabled, the timer pauses automatically when the agent navigates away from the ticket, such as by switching to another tab. The timer resumes automatically when the agent navigates back to the ticket.

Edit time submission

When you enable this setting, the above window appears when an agent submits a ticket. Agents can review and edit their time spent on a ticket if, for example, they spent significant time discussing the issue with a colleague outside of Zendesk.

With this feature enabled, agents are required to confirm their time in order to submit the ticket. They have 15 seconds from when the window opens to cancel.

Simplified time submission

When you enable this setting, agents can edit and submit their time spent in minutes, rather than in hours, minutes, and seconds. For example, with this setting enabled, an agent could enter "5" for five minutes. Without this setting enabled, the agent would have to enter it in the format "00:05:00".

Note that this setting only applies if you've also enabled the Edit time submission setting.

Enable role restrictions?

When you select this checkbox, you can select which roles should use the Time Tracking app. The app will not appear and will not track time for roles you don't select if you have this setting enabled.

Note: If you enable role restrictions, roles without access to the app will see the custom fields the app creates in their tickets. By design, roles with access to the app won't see the custom fields. For details, see Understanding Time Tracking custom ticket fields.

Understanding Time Tracking custom ticket fields

When you install Time Tracking, it automatically creates two custom ticket fields, Time spent since last update and Total time spent. You can view the fields by clicking the Admin () icon in the sidebar, then selecting Manage > Ticket Fields.

By design, agents with access to the app won't see the custom fields on their tickets. If you enable role restrictions, roles that don't have access to the app will see the custom fields on their tickets.

If you're on Enterprise or have the Productivity Pack Professional Add-on and are using ticket forms, you'll need to manually move the new fields to all of your ticket forms. If you don't add the new fields to all of your ticket forms, it won't work (see Time Tracking app error message in Support tech notes).

To add the custom fields to your ticket forms (Professional Add-on and Enterprise)

Click Admin (), then select Manage > Ticket Forms.

Click the name of a ticket form to open it.

Drag the Time spent since last update and Total time spent fields from the list on the right onto your ticket form.

Comments

We recently started using the Time tracking app and decided to use the "edit time submission" function.Only a few groups of our agents need to register their time. They really love this feature.The others however find it annoying to see the prompt after every update.

Is there any way to select which (group of) agents get the "edit time submission" prompt?

@Ed - I'm going to spin up a ticket for you so we can take a look at this directly. This isn't typically an issue with the time tracking app so I want to take a look. Look for an email from me shortly. Cheers!

The app specifically tracks how long an agent spends on a ticket. Whether that time will include time spent outside of that ticket will depend on whether you enable auto-pause or not. But ultimately, this app doesn't track everything your agent does in the agent interface, just the time they spend on tickets.

The Time Tracking App will start tracking time when the Agent opens the ticket in Zendesk. The Time Tracking App does not run outside of the apps panel on a ticket, so if the ticket is not open in a tab then the app will not be tracking time.

If you do not have auto-pause enabled then the time will continue counting up for as long as the ticket tab is open for.

If two people are looking at the same ticket the app will be running independently for each user. The time that would be submitted with a ticket update would be how long that specific Agent had the ticket open for.

"Resume on changes: When changes are made to any fields, a modal will ask if the timer should be resumed." I don't understand what this function does?

How can we (admins) correct time or remove time, in case an agent makes a mistaken in time tracking?

What happens if an agent has 2 different tickets in 2 browser tabs open? Does it count all 3 tickets? (We often have e-mails which link to an end-user's ticket. An agent then clicks on this link to work on this ticket, but might have another ticket already open on screen).

How can we trigger a notification e-mail to a manager if a certain ticket exceeds X hours?

I'm not sure I understand you first question; I don't see that quote anywhere in the article. Can you point me to where you're looking in the article?

If you enable the auto pause feature, the time tracking on a ticket will pause when the agent navigates away from that ticket. So if your agents work on multiple tickets at the same time, I'd recommend enabling that feature.

The only way I can think to notify an admin when a ticket exceeds a certain number of hours would be to use a trigger, but the app uses numeric fields and you can only trigger on those fields if data is present or not present; you can't specify if the entry is over a certain number. I'd say that your best bet for this would be to look into SLAs.

I'm not sure if admins can change agent time entries, so I'm going to look into that for you.

Agents many times have ticket 1 open already on their screen and get a question via Skype from a colleague with a link to ticket 2. When they click the link from Skype, ticket 2 opens in a new browser tab - resulting in both ticket 1 and 2 to be actively counting.

This is expected behavior. The timer will start whenever a ticket is opened, regardless of whether there are other tickets open in the same Agent's interface.

The app allows you to edit time submission - if an Agent leaves a ticket open all day because they were working on other tickets, they can adjust the time that gets submitted when they finish working on the first ticket. This is covered in t he following article: